Archive | July, 2009

I It is possible to argue that the growth rate figures for both India and China are exaggerated.  But, we shall proceed by accepting them as correct.  The inequalities in both economies however have increased dramatically during this very phase of extraordinarily high growth, to a point where substantial segments of the population, particularly, but […]

Looking for Leverage By calling for the release of imprisoned protesters, Rafsanjani is hoping that the demonstrators will see him as their backer, and therefore, that they should continue demonstrating.  This is the most critical part of his strategy, to align himself with the people on the streets and to bring out as many people […]

Mousavi, Rafsanjani, and their supporters get an F in foreign policy: “‘Death to China!’ and ‘Death to Russia!’ chanted supporters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during a sermon by influential former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to news reports” (Kristen Chick, Christian Science Monitor, 17 July 2009). “Death to China!  Death to Russia!” […]

  Robert Cassanello, Melanie Shell-Weiss, eds.  Florida’s Working-Class Past: Current Perspectives on Labor, Race, and Gender from Spanish Florida to the New Immigration.  Working in the Americas Series.  Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008.  320 pp.  $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8130-3283-2. Once upon a time, but within this reviewer’s scholarly lifetime, the primary focus of labor […]

The meeting in Costa Rica didn’t, nor could it, lead to peace. The people of Honduras are not at war, it’s just the perpetrators of the coup who are using weapons against the people. One should demand that they cease their war against the people. That meeting between Zelaya and the coup was only good for discrediting the constitutional president and wearing away at the energies of the Honduran people.

15 July 2009 The Department of State had prior knowledge of the coup. The Department of State and the US Congress funded and advised the actors and organizations in Honduras that participated in the coup. The Pentagon trained, schooled, commanded, funded, and armed the Honduran armed forces that perpetrated the coup and that continue to […]

The jump in prices, combined with flat nominal wages, means real wages are falling. The overall CPI rose by 0.7 percent in June, driven by a 7.4 percent jump in energy prices.  It has now risen at a 3.3 percent annual rate over the last quarter, compared with a decline of 1.4 percent over the […]

Back to the past — and with a landslide.  The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which for 70 years, from 1928 to 2000, ruled Mexico as a one-party state won a decisive victory in the mid-term elections on July 5.  The PRI’s victory represented a defeat both for the conservative economic and social policies of President […]

  Klaus Lederer, leader of the Left Party in Germany, at an 11 January 2009 pro-Israel demonstration titled “Solidarity with Israel — Against the Terrorism of Hamas” On this coming Thursday (16 July 2009), the leader of the left-wing party in Berlin, Klaus Lederer, will speak at the offices of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in […]

Price declines have been sharpest at the bottom end of the market. The collapse of the housing bubble has put downward pressure on house prices in all segments of the housing market, but the more moderate end has been by far the hardest hit.  In former bubble markets, houses in the bottom third of the […]

Abdelwahab El-Affendi is a well-known Islamic scholar and political philosopher from Sudan, presently based in London.  Author of numerous works, his latest book, provocatively titled Who Needs an Islamic State? discusses what he regards as the serious lacunae in contemporary Islamist political thought, which, in his view, have caused Islamist movements to reach a virtual […]

Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Simon Reich, eds.  Immigration, Integration, and Security: America and Europe in Comparative Perspective.   The Security Continuum: Global Politics in the Modern Age.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.  xi + 480 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4344-0; $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-5984-7. Migration and security have always been linked, but, as Ariane Chebel […]

July 13, 2009 Things are getting worse each day inside Honduras.  Over the weekend, two well-known social leaders were assassinated by the coup forces.  Roger Bados leader of the Bloque Popular & the National Resistance Front against the coup d’etat, was killed in the northern city of San Pedro Sula.  Approximately at 8pm on Saturday […]

  ایران ای سرای امید On 17 June 2009, Mehr News reported that Mohammad Reza Shajarian wrote a letter to Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Managing Director Ezzatollah Zarghami, objecting to the airing of his works on Iranian state TV and radio: “As you know, IRIB repeatedly airs my epic songs particularly ‘O Iran, O […]

Did a CID-Gallup poll last week indicate that a plurality of Hondurans support the military coup against democratically elected President Zelaya?  Yes, according to the Washington Post (July 9), the Wall Street Journal (July 10), the Christian Science Monitor (July 11), and Reuters (July 9), which all reported that the poll showed 41% in favor […]

  The Slovenian philosopher and sociologist Slavoj Zizek argues that tolerance constitutes a mystifying discourse veiling what is really at the heart of political and social struggle.  There is good reason, Zizek argues, that someone like Martin Luther King didn’t make use of the concept.  The struggle against racism is not a struggle for tolerance, […]

  David Jan Sorkin.  The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.  xv + 339 pp.  $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-13502-1. On January 14, 1791, the Comte de Mirabeau delivered a speech to the National Assembly in defense of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the controversial project […]

Artists mobilize again to repudiate the coup d’état and the de facto government in Honduras, in what we shall call the Plaza of Resistance, where Isis Obed Murillo was murdered on the 5th of July. 11 July 2009 Red Lésbica Cattrachas is a lesbian feminist group.  For more information, contact Cattrachas general coordinator Indyra M. […]

These protesters that the Associated Press chose to label just “Iranian-Americans” (see below) are the Mojahedin (one of whose front groups the “National Coalition of Pro-Democracy Advocates” is as you can plainly see from its Web site promoting the cause of “Iranian Opposition Members in Camp Ashraf, Iraq“), Republicans, and their “useful idiots” who have […]

Since 2005, Israel has implemented a “welfare to work” program (dubbed the Wisconsin Plan) that serves primarily to punish and further impoverish the country’s most vulnerable residents, particularly Palestinians, Mizrahis, and ultra-orthodox Jewish religious families. This video was brought online by the Alternative Information Center on 1 July 2009.